Metalheads

Two: Fiche Meara

That night, we slept in beds. For a full twelve hours. We had been getting up at dawn, going to sleep at ten at night, so we really needed it after the two weeks we had spent from Melbourne to Adelaide, stopping three days there, then continuing on to here. All in all, about eighteen hours of sleep over the past two weeks. We slept from six that night to six in the morning, on my part; the others slept for four hours more.

I stumbled blearily downstairs, into the cafe, for pre-dawn breakfast. My shirt was crumpled from where I slept in it, and I was the first one up. Plenty of time before the concert tonight to have a shower and eat. Then find some clothes. Then find the bar we were playing in. Then find my damned pick...

I looked around, finding a nice table after a few seconds. Walking over to it, a pretty girl caught my wrist. She was passing by, and slipped something into my hand. She was gone before I could ask about it.

It was a piece of paper, on it a note, written in the best handwriting I had ever seen.

Hey there, you've been targeted.
You are about to be killed.
Duck.

I dropped to a crouch as a gunshot echoed around the cafe, startling the guests and smashing a cabinet behind the bar. The entire shelf crashed to the ground amidst the tinkle of glass shattering. I turned toward the shooter, seeing him realign his rifle at my head, saw his finger twitch on the trigger, then slowly put pressure on it.

I rolled out of the path of the bullet, clearing a space for it to bore about ten centimetres into the floor. Don't get hit by that monster, a little voice in my mind whispered. I sighed aloud, then ran in a crouch through the tables, keeping mostly out of view of the assassin, but edging closer and closer to him. I rose up behind him like a wraith, grabbing him in a sleeper hold, just as the girl from before threw a knife at the man in my grip. It plowed into his head, snapping it back against my hand, and the knife's momentum carried it straight through, stopped by the hilt. I looked at the useless sleeper hold, looked a bit longer at the knife point poking between my left hand fingers, then just plain stared at the girl as she melted into the crowd, beckoning at me to follow. I threaded my way through the tables in an almost parallel path to her, easing my way slowly toward the fast moving figure.

I reached her as she went out the exit, but by the time I left the cafe, she was gone. I looked around, then felt a sharp and sudden tug on my right arm. I was almost pulled off my feet as the girl yanked me roughly into an alleyway off the street. I stumbled to a stop about three metres from the mouth of the lane, only to be confronted by six armed men. They all carried the American standard issue M-16s, complete with hip holstered Glocks, and they all had complete black combat fatigues. The two in the middle were helmetless.

One of the two spoke. "Chaos?" The accent was rural British, by the sounds of it, and while he was looking in my direction, I figured he wasn't talking to me.

"Yeah," my saviour replied. Everything about her was nice - her voice was silky and soft, South American. She still managed to sound offended that the man had even questioned whether I was the right guy. The men stepped forward as one, forming a circle around me. The man that spoke before handed me a silver suitcase, and the soldiers hustled me out of the other end of the alley -

Into sunshine, in a small, deserted courtyard.

That didn't exist. On any map I owned, nor any map on the internet.

The soldiers loosened their circle, then abruptly all faced outward, except for the man that had spoken. Again. He pointed to the bag, pinched his own armour - as if to say 'clothes' - then turned outward like the rest of his group. I shrugged, flipping the catches on the case and opening it. The inside was made of black foam, and an M-16 lay nestled soundly in the middle of it, underneath a pile of armour and a belt to match. So I changed my clothes, in a deserted courtyard on the outskirts of Perth, surrounded by seven soldiers with American gear.